Trump just proposed increasing the defense budget from $900 billion in 2026 to $1.5 trillion in 2027. So, I expect you’re correct.

You’re just airing your frustrations with this response. None of this is actionable advice about what Americans should actually be doing that takes in mind the advice of the person you are responding to.

Giving you the benefit of the doubt, I presume you mean that it was an exercise in preaching to the choir.

But the way you put it seems to denigrate the white liberals themselves. Are you actively scorning valuable supporters?

Prior to the protests, there was a lot of discussion about how people of color, and especially black Americans, were always the ones putting their neck on the line for progress in this country and that they felt particularly vulnerable and that it was time for white people to stand up. I heard that line repeatedly. So why are we criticizing them for standing up when we told them to stand up?

How about you try to be inclusive and encourage as many people to join your cause as possible?!

His misogyny terrifies me. But plenty of gay men believe women are fully equal humans and even enjoy our company.

And what if she just lies? This is more or less true for me: I have an IUD that has more or less ended my periods. Whenever they ask me for a last period I just say I don’t have one and that I am not pregnant. I do not entertain any of their speculation. If you have no intention of remaining pregnant, it’s a good enough answer.

I am skeptical of your story because I don’t think any medical facility would accept the result of a pregnancy test not administered by a medical professional.

You should keep your pet indoors too. Lots of well-fed pet cats like to hunt small mammals and birds because it’s what they’re wired to do. Many many housecats bring their owners gifts of dead birds and mice.

You’re deflected from blaming pesticide >manufacturers and real estate developers, so that >you can scream your head off at your neighbor’s >SPCA rescue.

I literally said that habitat destruction was a larger effect, you just chose not to quote that part of what I said.

I haven’t seen any numbers on wild cats prior to the >arrival of European settlers. But given the lack of >demographic analysis, I’m betting these figures >have enormous error bars, even assuming you’re >conjecture is correct.

For bobcats, wiki cites a journal from 1996 that said population density of bobcats varied from 1-38 per 25 sq km (numbers from surveys in the 80s, when I read the journal). Making an assumption that pre-European settler numbers averaged out across North American habitats to be more like the 38, and given that the lower 48 is ~8 million sq km, that would make the pre-1500s bobcat population ~12 million. The estimates for the current free roaming domestic housecat is about 100 million. You mentioned a couple other types of cats, but mountain lions are bigger and not the ones preying on small birds. Ocelots are more akin to the domestic cat, but their native range within the United States is much smaller (AZ to LA), with large portions of that area probably not able to support nearly as many animals. But even if I generously said there were another 12 million ocelots in the US, you’d still be only at a quarter of the current domestic cat population.

domestic cats have no natural predators. But again >- that’s not due to the cat population. It’s due to the >human population.

No. It’s due to the fact that they are not native to the United States. They don’t have natural predators because they aren’t naturally here.

Your visceral defense of housecats is just another example of the hypocrisy of humans. Everyone is willing to sacrifice the desires of someone else. No one is ever willing to give up their own destructive vices though. I didn’t even say people shouldn’t own them! I just said they should keep them indoors. Obviously, that’s not what cats want. Cats want to go outside and explore…and kill small animals. Because they are naturally predators and it’s their nature. But if you want to take responsibility for your personal impact, you would keep it indoors.

And again, while I agree that the industrial amounts of habitat destruction is a bigger effect, it doesn’t change the fact that the main impact you as an individual can have/ affect, is reining in your cute murder bot.

Domestic cats’ population is orders of magnitude larger than the native cats population was or is.

While you’re correct that humans are also devastating the habitats of native birds, and that that is likely a (much?) larger effect, the invasive species that is the domestic housecat is also talking a toll of a couple billion birds per year.

There are multiple well-regarded studies providing those numbers. You choosing to disbelieve them is about as valid as believing vaccinations are more harmful than diseases, that climate change is a hoax, or that illegal immigrants are responsible for the housing shortage.

Domestic cats are not native to the US. Their presence is absolutely human caused. And lack of efforts to contain them is also the fault of humans. People should not feed the strays in their neighborhoods. People should not let their own cats outside. Etc.

The person you responded to was also bashing third-party voting.

Honestly, I’d rather people educate themselves and vote third parties than not vote like 40% of the country did. If third parties got a large piece of the vote, they could get public funding and make their voices heard more. Sure, there’s only two sides to every issue, but you could have coalition style like in Europe.

But our two parties conspire to monopolize the seats of power just like the corporations that buy them.

It’s the one-two punch of poor education and the propaganda of our media environment.

Nothing will change until MAGA Americans have to eat the shit sandwich they’ve been making.

Unfortunately, many of them will be unable (due to a combination of a lack of education and a steady diet of propaganda) to understand the source of their new rations.

I could not agree more. These are people who have taken greed and hoarding of wealth well into the realm of mental illness, and we are supposed to admire them!

While I agree that nothing will change if we just languish in defeatism, look at the list!

https://www.senate.gov/senators/Class_II.htm

I can really only imagine about 4 of those being competitive. Most of those states are deep red, and Republicans aren’t known for stepping out of line to make a moral stand.

The midterms can’t fix this. The most the midterms can do is deliver a majority in the House. We can’t roll back anything and we can’t hold anyone accountable with just the House. You can block legislation, but Trump has basically gone around Congress anyway so that he doesn’t have to compromise with non-MAGA Republicans.

Even IF the election is fair (big IF, if you ask me), it still is basically useless. 2024 was the end of a functional federal government.

I thought the premise was Europe making an alliance with China against the US…? It wouldn’t matter what Americans could stomach at that point.

As an American, I think a de facto alliance with China is going to be forced upon us anyway (I really think Trump will let them take Taiwan, it just remains to be seen what he’ll ask for), and it will go down easier than attacking a European nation will (Greenland).

He went around Congress. It was an illegal action. Congress may try to do something to stop him, but my odds are on the Supreme Court intervening to let Trump continue to do whatever he wants.

I figured this was more current events than racism related. Currently the biggest competitors to American AI companies are Chinese AI companies, with models like DeepSeek that people presume were back-engineered versions of American models.

When a link is dead, does Wikipedia allow you to change it to an archived copy of the webpage from before it was taken down?

This must be the source for my MAGA parents telling us AOC was worth $30 million on NYE. Sigh.

At least they accepted it when we found multiple sources putting her net worth in the neighborhood of $100k.